WHEREFORE ART THOU, SHAKESPEARE?
(C)1994 Alan M. Schwartz
The title inquires as to his emotional disposition not his
physical location, underlining the subtle and drastic changes
late 16th Century English has undergone. Though sounding much
like present dialect, Shakespearean puns, allusions and
allegorical references are all but unintelligible to the modern
speaker. Add to this the politically correct cleansing of the
Bard's 36 plays, 154 sonnets and 2 narrative poems in 1802
through the Society for the Suppression of Vice and its avatar
Thomas Bowdler. Much of the official truth of critical analyses
of the masterwork of the English language is thus unfounded
garbage spin doctored to the perceived needs at hand. It is a
skyscraper whose construction commenced with its third story.
Walk past the "Dissertation Abstracts" section of an academic
library and compare the few shelves of Masters and Doctoral
theses in science with the cubic yards of Liberal Arts' output.
That Edward de Vere is in fact the author of Shakespeare's works
is consistent with the former's noble lineage, wealth, wide
travels, acknowledged intelligence, notoriously scurrilous and
licentious habits, and business contacts with a broad variety of
classes across the civilized world at that time. He would have
had reason to accede to anonymity both for the outrageously bawdy
surface content of the works and for their explosive and
subversive political undertones, lest his head and shoulders part
company through the displeasure of the Crown. Shakespeare (1564-
1615) apparently never traveled much beyond Stratford-on-Avon,
Warwickshire, acquired much of a formal education beyond a
conjectured and otherwise undocumented attendance at Stratford's
free grammar school nor had contact across the varied social
classes and customs of the time. How did he seize the byline?
In 1592 one Robert Greene referred cryptically to Shakespeare in
his "Groatsworth of Wit Bought With a Million of Repentance"
remaking a line from "Henry VI", Part 3: "O tiger's heart wrapped
in a woman's hide" into a polemic about "an upstart crow,
beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped
in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a
blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute "Johannes
fac totum" (Johnny know-it-all), is in his own conceit the only
Shake-scene in a country." It is the only bad publicity the
Bard has received in the past 380 years. It bears study.
Through insult or neglect we can readily conceive of an
archetypical Jacques Pierre - a detested Frenchman awarded the
ceremonial and universal imprimatur of village idiot -
desultorily slurred into Shakespeare. Imagine one ham of an
actor in the manner of a William Shatner stuck with a local
pejorative as his name, said embarrassment borrowed by the true
author to deflect inquisition into his identity and in turn
constitute an irresistible lure and payment to the rightful owner
of the name. Stranger things have happened.
What can serve as a source of unbowlderized Shakespeare rendered
into a modern tongue? Shakespeare has been bludgeoned into
political correctness and wallows in linguistic obscurity within
its native language. It brilliantly shines forth as the original
and in contemporary vernacular in German. Christoph Martin
Wieland (1733-1813) translated 22 of Shakespeare's plays into
German. Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) collaborated with August
Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845; Fredrich the philosopher was his
brother) on the outstanding translation of Shakespeare that
remains in use in Germany even today. Shakespeare served as
keystone in the foundation of the German Romanticism movement and
the following "Sturm und Drang" school of drama. German literati
refer to the body of work as "our Shakespeare."
One would imagine that the Huns and the Limeys would have been on
better terms throughout recent history given this significant
overlap in their cherished literature. More than trifling
quarrels like World Wars I and II place international
understanding fostered though shared culture, literature,
performing and fine arts into a fitting perspective.
International understanding is achieved when Mean Mother Green
cleans house unhindered by civilian whining - George Herbert
Walker Bush and Presidents succeeding take note.
Have you ever seen Diana Rigg in the movie version of "A
Midsummer Night's Dream"? Her costume is a sparse sprinkle of
fairy dust and scant transparent gossamer applied to flesh
otherwise admirably bereft of anything but the highest Western
hygienic standards. Shakespeare, whoever he was, recognized a
good thing when he wrote it. Fie on you, Thomas Bowdler!